The Schrödinger picture is under new management.
Physicists are people, just like you. They have the same flaws. So let's ask, are physicists really selflessly exploring the fundamental structure of the universe? Or are they just looking out for themselves?

Monday, 13 June 2011

Suppose you have an idea for a research project. You wonder if someone else has already looked at the problem. You might Google it.

Then you start working on the project. You encounter problems, things you don't understand. You might Google, looking for related problems and solutions.

You get some results. You might Google certain likely phrases, to see if anyone has discovered the same, or related, results by different means.

You think about what journal to send your paper to. You might Google for "journal name" and "project title" to see which journals might go for it.

You wonder who to suggest as a reviewer. Someone who works on related problems. You might Google to find out who that would be.

Or you could just blindly write a shitty little paper without citing any of the tens of papers on the same subject published in the past couple of years, papers which contain every result you claim is new, and written in a much nicer way, and send the bastard thing to the arXiv with an air of distain which borders on the insulting.

And then you might get in your tank and drive over the "insulting" line and rattle off cackling like a banshee into the no-man's-land of "fuck you".